Brahms composed his Sonata No.2 in A major Op.100 in 1886 during the first of three summer vacations in the village of Hofstetten in the Swiss mountains where the Aare flows into Lake Thun.
In a remarkable burst of holiday energy, he also wrote his Second Cello Sonata Op.99 and the Third Piano Trio Op.101 there, as well as some of his Third Violin Sonata Op.108.
Two of Brahms’ songs to poems by Klaus Groth, the highly wrought ‘Komm bald’ (‘Come soon’), and ‘Wie Melodien zieht es mir leise durch den Sinn’ (‘Like melodies it floweth, soft thro’ my spirit calls’) are featured in motivic guise in the two principal themes of the first movement of this sonata.
And in my view there’s no more pleasing interpretation of this work than the one by violinist David Oistrakh:
